Alright, beat boss 1 and am halfway through level two. Here's some impressions.
The combat is fun, and I haven't found it too repetitive because you get combos at a steady pace. Having said that - it doesn't seem like any moves can be canceled into the dodge, which makes things slow (slower than they should be imo).
The whip is great to pull enemies back in, but it has to be aimed pretty accurately with the joystick which leads to a lot of frustrating misses. This is exacerbated by the large visual flair of the whip (and all your weapons for that matter) which can appear to clip enemies with no effect. It's easy to feel like you're constantly either a few pixels off or just getting robbed.
The whip can also be used to throw certain enemies or objects into other enemies. The only problem is this is really easy to trigger when you were trying to pull an enemy and can lead to you eating damage.
It feels like they should have given you more forward momentum - the knuckles, for example, are supposed to be your slow, heavy attack. But not only do they not do that much more damage than the sword, they also barely move you forward, so if you haven't already slowed or immobilized the enemy then it can be hard to trap them. The only real way to interrupt the enemies are with the second or third hit of the knuckles but it's just rare that I have an enemy nearby on that hit who I haven't already frozen.
So most of the combos are about freezing enemies or slowing them down, or burning them for DoT. This is all prettt fun, but it just needs to be pushed and polished a bit more for it to be great.
There are, however, really lame arena fights with color coded enemies. This is never a good gameplay choice, and it sucks here too because the arenas are small (limiting your best move - the dash). Additionally, limiting the already small move set even further isn't fun. Plus the colors change, and one of the colors os "invincible." Not really fun to just dash around waiting for them to change.
The visuals are overall nice, the music is pretty standout. Hopefully the story picks up, but the dialogue is a little cheesy. Feels like it's just there to be there.
For 11 bucks though, it's so far worth it. I'm going to lean heavy on the co op though as that's one of my favorite things. I'll check back in once I've played some more